Conclusion

Abstract

As an avid reader, moviegoer, and culture-watcher, I have perhaps learned too well the processes that invite identification with an/other woman on the screen. Motherhood also has increased my awareness of the many “missing women” narratives upon which the news industry feeds with all too much zeal and regularity. These stories have haunted me, and this haunting in service of advocacy has guided the production of this text. As Avery Gordon writes in Ghostly Matters, “Following the ghosts is about making a contact that changes you and refashions the social relations in which you are located. It is about putting life back in where only a vague memory or a bare trace was visible to those who bothered to look.”¹